The Black Three

By Gene Skipworth

Prior to the mid-sixties, Grayville, TN, was one of twenty-four 'sundown towns.' A 'sundown town' was a town that had a sign on the outskirts stating, 'Negros are not allowed in the city limits after sundown.' Very few Black individuals lived in Grayville, and the high school rarely had Black students.

In August of 2020, a Black doctor rel

• Language: English
• Publisher: Authors' Tranquility Press
• Release date: Mar 14, 2024
• ISBN: 9781963636840

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Copyright © 2024 by Gene Skipworth

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The Black Three/Gene Skipworth

Paperback: 978-1-964037-90-5

eBook: 978-1-963636-84-0

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CONTENTS

Introduction

STAGE ONE

I. Grayville As a Sundown Town

A. Early History

B. Wanda Phillips

C. The 1970s

II. University of Illinois – First Encounter with Blacks

A. Three New Words

B. Jesse Parker

C. Lesson Learned

D. Retired and Back in Grayville

A. A Pick-up Truck Mentality

B. The Confederate Flag

C. Black Lives Matter

D. National Football League

E. Pseudo Patriotism

IV. The New Challenge

A. Dr. Bokima

B. David and Lisa

C. Opponents Reaction to the Black Three

A. Gary Patterson

B. The Six White Players

C. The Racist Comments

D. At the Bokima Home

V. The Issue

A. Where Are the Black Three?

B. Coach Calls Dr. Bokima

C. Reactions of the Black Three

VI. The Coach Forfeits the Game

A. The Coach

B. The Coach Expresses His Feelings

C. Player Confessions

VII. The Coach Speaks to Those Waiting Outside the Locker Room

VIII. Gathering at the Bokima Home

A. Mark and David

B. Mark and Post-Forfeit

STAGE TWO

IX. The White Five at Home After Post-Forfeit

A. Bledsoe at Home After Post-Forfeit

B. Diles at Home After Post-Forfeit

C. Miller at Home After Post-Forfeit

D. Carter at Home After Post-Forfeit

A. Chad at Home Post-Forfeit

B. Dr. Bokima Receives Call from Rev. Morgan Post-Forfeit

C. Joseph and Chad

X. Signing Individual Pledges – A Team Commitment

A. The Shelby Forfeit Hits the Streets

B. Coach Meets With the Players

C. The Player’s Meeting and Pledge

XI. Fragile Peace in Post-Shelby Grayville

A. Expression of Hate

B. The Upside

C. The Bullies

D. The Sentence

E. Post Sentence Happenings

F. Jake

G. Tony Meets Gary

H. Tony Meets Samuel

XII. The Release to Move Forward

XIII. The Next Game – Clifton at CCHS

A. The First Practice Since Shelby

B. The Strategy for Making a Statement

C. Taking Precautions

D. The Game

E. The Final Score

STAGE THREE

XIV. Dark Side

A. The Aryan Patriotic Brotherhood Met Their Match

B. When Making the Wrong Turn

C. Charles and The New Dawning Light

D. The Effect of Grace

XV. Touching Lives for Good

A. Gary and Mom Visit Charles

B. Gathering at the Broken Drum

C. With Grandpa and Grandma Norris

D. A Pattern to Touch Lives for Good

XVI. Making All Things New

A. Charles and Tony

B. The Word from the Players

XVII. Evidence of Change – The Council on Respect, Empathy, Compassion (CREC)

A. Rationale for a Statement

A. The Council at Work

B. Statement on Why establish a Council on Respect, Empathy, and Compassion.

C. The Mission Statement

XVIII. Years Later

XX. Lives Transformed by Grace

A. Chad

B. Tom

C. Mack

D. Charles

E. Tony

INTRODUCTION

THE STORY WORLD

Grayville High School in Grayville, Tennessee never had a black basketball player. Now GHS has three. A new doctor moved to Grayville in August of 2020. Dr. Bokima has three sons who played basketball for Weston, Ohio High School last year and the three took Weston to the Ohio State High School basketball tournament championship. Joseph, a senior, and oldest of the three, is six feet nine inches tall and was named Most Valuable Player of the Ohio State Basketball Tournament. The other two sons are twins, Samuel and David, both juniors, are six feet six inches tall.

Dr. Hiram Bokima is from Nigeria. He was orphaned at the age of eight when his mother died of AIDS two weeks after his eighth birthday. Prior to his mother’s death, just after his seventh birthday, his father also died of AIDS. He was adopted by a United Church of Christ missionary to Nigeria, Rev. Dr. William Norris and his wife, Betty. The Bokima family were members of Rev. Norris’s church in the village of Opaka, Nigeria. Opaka is one of the most poverty-stricken areas of Nigeria. Rev. Norris fielded a team of agricultural experts in the area of irrigation. That was one of his first tasks as missionary, to help the indigenous develop resources for planting and growing.

Dr. Bokima, at six feet ten inches tall, played center on the Nigerian National Basketball Team during his high school years. He became very close to his adoptive parents. Rev. and Mrs. Norris contributed a great deal to the maturity and growth of Hiram. He excelled in academics and began to have a vision for himself. That vision was fulfilled as he came to America and attended Temple University where he was a pre-med major and a basketball All American his senior year.

Dr. Bokima attended John Hopkins University Medical School and did his internship at the Ohio State University Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. He left a successful practice in Weston, Ohio to move to Grayville to be near his parents who are both dealing with declining health issues due to aging. His parents retired to the Homeland Retirement Center in Pleasant Hill, just outside Grayville.

STAGE ONE

I. Grayville As a Sundown Town

When Jack Stone was a sophomore at Grayville High School in 1953, he was an usher at the Rialto Theater, the downtown theater in Grayville. His main job as an usher was to use a flashlight to help people find a seat. When blacks came to the Rialto, he led them up the narrow stairway in the back corner of the theater to the balcony. In Grayville that is where blacks had to sit when they came to see a movie, the balcony.

Grayville was one of the twenty-four Sundown Towns in the state of Tennessee. Sundown Towns had a sign on the outskirts of town that said, Negros are not allowed in the city limits after sundown. Sundown Towns were also known as Sunset Towns or Gray Towns. They were all-white communities that practiced racial segregation by excluding non-whites through discrimination, local laws, intimidation, and violence. Jack Stone says he remembers seeing the Sundown sign outside town on route 70 when he was in high school.

As an usher at the Rialto, Jack didn’t seat many blacks. There were very few in Grayville. The few that went to a movie went to the Saturday afternoon matinee because of the unwritten law that blacks were not allowed in the city limits after sundown. None of them lived in Grayville because there was another unwritten law that blacks could not live within the city limits.

A. Early History

About the year 1900 the blacks that lived in the area lived in a small settlement six miles from Grayville called Taylor Town. They had a school which was a log house that served not only as a school but also a church. There is a graveyard and there are several monuments still standing at that location. Around 1900 there were 572 blacks in Cox County, in 1910 there were just 91, and in 1920 there remained 25 blacks. In 1900 most of the blacks moved thirty miles east to Harrisburg. No one knows for sure why they moved en masse, but the suspicion is that they were forced to leave. About that time a black man was lynched at the courthouse square in Grayville. Four blacks were hung on a separate occasion near Pleasant Hill in 1920.

The few blacks who have lived in Grayville since the depression, lived outside the city limits in an area unfamiliar to most Grayville residents. It was not as far away as Taylor Town. They lived on an abandoned lot in four small run-down houses, called coal shacks which sat in a square lot with each house on a corner of the square. They were called coal shacks because once a month, summer and winter, a dump truck drove to the center of the square and dumped a load of coal in the yard for the people to use. There was not enough wood around the area to be gathered for them to burn in their stoves.

The owner of the GMC dealership in Grayville, a member of Trinity United Methodist Church, always had a dump truck drop off coal in the yard in the center of the shacks. He called it his monthly goodwill contribution. None of the shacks had running water. There were two outhouses located near the alley for the four shacks.

The black families that lived in those shacks didn’t live there very long. Most of the time there would be one or two of the shacks empty. There would only be one or two black families at one time in Grayville following the Depression. Looking back on that time one can’t imagine why any black person would want to live in Grayville. The black women that worked, usually worked as domestics. The men, if they worked, worked wherever they could find a job.

Prior to 1969, especially in the 50s, Saturday night in downtown Grayville used to be very crowded, noisy, and busy in a festive kind of way. Streets and stores were filled with people, the Rialto was full for each showing of the movie, Main Street was bumper to bumper with traffic and it was hard to find a parking place within six blocks of Main Street. Several small groups of friends, family, and acquaintances would congregate in conversation on the sidewalk on either side of Main Street.

Blacks were never seen downtown on Saturday night. In fact, there were never any blacks downtown on Main Street at any time. There was another unwritten law that blacks weren’t allowed on Main Street. The lone water fountain they could use was on West Ave a block away. The outhouse they used as a public restroom was down the alley off West Ave and behind Ralph’s Body Shop.

B. Wanda Phillips

The only black student during the 50s at Grayville High School was Wanda Phillips. She graduated in 1954 and never lived more than two years in Grayville. Hardly anybody knew her and if a person wanted to know her name, they would have to look through the yearbooks to find the only black girl and that would be Wanda. Very few took the time or effort to get acquainted with her. Some people feel bad that they never did. One time she came to the Rialto with her mom and dad and little sister. Jack Stone ushered them upstairs to the balcony. It didn’t enter his mind to say hello to her or to ask her how she was doing. Nor did he give a second thought of how wrong it was to usher her and her family to the balcony.

When one looked back and thought about Wanda and remembered that no one ever spoke to her or ever took the time to get acquainted, they should feel very ashamed. Jack Stone expressed his shame as he thought to himself, If I would happen to see her today, I am sure she wouldn’t say a word to me and I don’t blame her. I am sure she wouldn’t even know me. I feel so sorry for ignoring her the way I did, the way we all did.

Jack Stone was a good Methodist boy. He went to worship and Sunday School every week, church on Sunday night, Wednesday he went to the prayer meeting, and then youth fellowship on Thursday night. Of course, the Trinity United Methodist Church was all white. Every individual that he and friends and classmates grew up with was white. They grew up culturally prejudiced and raised in a social system that fashioned a tolerance for bigotry. No wonder so many ignored Wanda when she was at GHS.

Kids growing up in Grayville during their elementary school years, learned that Grayville was a Sundown Town. Kids growing up in Grayville during their elementary school years, leaned not to associate with black people and to be afraid of them. It is called a culturally absorbed prejudice. It is also called a socially acquired prejudice.

The short time Wanda spent in high school must have been a terribly unhappy ordeal for her. No one befriended her or spent time with her. She was never seen at any of the football or basketball games. In fact, there was never any blacks at any of the sporting events, especially night games.

C. The 1970s

In the early 70’s blacks would be seen walking along Route 70 past the Bargain Barn on their way home. Even though they were finally allowed on Main Street, there were hardly any blacks anywhere to be seen. Even though they were allowed to sit at the counter at Martin’s Pharmacy, seldom did a black person get near Martin’s Pharmacy. No one ever saw a black person driving a car. In most cases, they never had a car to drive.

When Jack Stone returned to Grayville for family visits or class reunions or other occasions like funerals and weddings, he seldom, if ever, saw a black person. The Blacks Only water fountain had been taken away. Nor did he see the outhouse behind what used to be Ralph’s Body Shop.

He heard about a black woman in 1969 that sat at the counter at Martin’s Pharmacy. They said that two sheriff deputies were called to tell her to leave. But she didn’t. They carried her out of Martin’s and took her to jail. It turned out that she was a civil rights activist from Knoxville.

Some things have changed since Jack Stone left in 1955. Blacks are able to walk on Main Street, can be seen in the city limits after sundown, and can even live in the city limits. That sounded like progress to Jack Stone.

II. University of Illinois – First Encounter with Blacks

When Jack left Grayville sixty-five years ago, he attended the University of Illinois on a football scholarship. He was, until 1968, the only recruit in the state of Tennessee to attend the University of Illinois. In 1968 a kid from Morristown received a football scholarship to Illinois because his mother happened to be an aunt of the defensive line coach at the time.

A. Three New Words

It was at the University of Illinois that his cultural bias, his prejudicial up-bringing, and the racist attitude that he absorbed in his school years, was met head-on with the concepts of respect, empathy, and compassion toward other people, especially blacks. His University of Illinois experience was a great learning experience for him.

Respect, empathy, and compassion, essentials for a solid relationship, were what he should have learned and taken in as an important part of his life. The good folk at Trinity United Methodist Church in Grayville made sure that he took in Jesus as the most important part of his life. In the first few months at Illinois, Jack began to think that Trinity UMC should have made respect, empathy, and compassion as high priorities in his life.

Respect, empathy, and compassion were concepts that were not familiar to him or a part of his vocabulary. He saw his black and white teammates show respect, empathy, and compassion to each other. He caught himself observing those relationships. They witnessed to him the great value of all three, especially when he saw black-white interaction.

Respect was never a word or concept that he was familiar with in relation to black people. He learned in third grade Sunday school at the Methodist Church we were to respect our parents. But Rochelle, who was in the Sunday school class with him, had a father who got drunk a lot and beat her. She told Mrs. Clark, the Sunday school teacher, I don’t respect my father because he beats me and my mom a lot. Am I going to hell? He should be the one who goes to hell. What can I do? Mrs. Clark said to all of us, We have to respect our fathers.

Empathy was a word Jack never used, and he wasn’t even sure he knew what it meant. Empathy is a great word when one talks about relationships, especially when diversity is discussed. Empathy is having the capacity for sharing the feelings of another person. It has a great deal to do with understanding, being aware of, sensitive to, vicariously experiencing the feelings and thoughts of another person. Empathy would go a long way in getting rid of a lot of the prejudice toward people who are different.

Compassion was a word that most of the kids in Grayville never associated with personal relationships. Compassion was something missionaries were to preach and show to the natives of Uganda. Respect, empathy, and compassion for someone, especially a black person, was never an integrated part of Jack Stone’s personality.

Jack was a halfback, and his biggest competition was from four black players. Abe Woods, Les Brothers, Harry Jackson, and the great Bobby Martin. He had never been around a black person before. In Grayville, he just saw Wanda Phillips at a distance down the hallway.

At Illinois all the stereotypes he had learned about blacks from the Cox County good o’boys got blown out of the water. He had learned back home that blacks were lazy, good dancers, too dumb to be a soldier, couldn’t read or write, didn’t know English, would not work, had a certain smell, and all the young black girls just wanted to have babies. The wildest stereotype he learned about black people was when he was in junior high. Billie Joe Schaeffer, the owner of Schaeffer’s Shell station near the junior high school, told Jack and his friends, when they stopped in for a Nehi soda, Nigras are all ignorant bastards. They will never count for nothin.

Abe Woods was a journalism major studying to be a TV news reporter. Les Brothers was studying aeronautical engineering. Harry Jackson was a political science major and talked about becoming a city manager. Oscar Lincoln, a black defensive lineman, was an education administration major looking to get his PhD to become a public-school administrator. Jack Stone was a physical education major.

It wasn’t hard for them to figure out that Jack had no experience with black people. They had encountered people like him. They were street savvy city boys. He was from rural small-town Bible-belt Tennessee. In his first eighteen years he learned about the colored. He knew they weren’t allowed on Main Street. No one ever told him why. He knew they were not allowed to live within the city limits. No one ever told him why. He knew they had to sit in the balcony at the Rialto. No one told him why. They weren’t allowed to sit at the counter at Martin’s Pharmacy. No one told him why.

He thought of his job as an usher at the Rialto Theater. He wondered what would happen if he told Abe Woods or Bobby Martin they had to go up the steps to the balcony. It would never happen. They wouldn’t stand for it. They would take his flashlight and threaten to ram it down his throat. He could just hear them as he flashed his light at them and tell them to follow him to the balcony. Stone, you can take that flashlight and shove it up your ass. We are going to sit where we want to.

When he thought of all the times Wanda Phillips was ushered up those steps to the balcony, he felt ashamed and humiliated. Later on, he often said, If only I could see her now and apologize! She too, like Les, Bobby, Harry, and Abe, had experienced enough humiliation and denial the short time she lived in Grayville. And Stone felt he had contributed to her misery.

B. Jesse Parker

The most memorable real face to face experience with a black girl, one in which Jack learned a great lesson, was from an encounter while a freshman at Illinois. It was an incident he had with Jesse Parker. Jesse was a good-looking black girl in his Spanish 101 class.

He had an injury from football practice and missed a class. A special assignment was passed out that day and he missed getting the assignment. So, he asked Jesse when he saw her in class, I missed getting the special assignment the other day because I was laid up from an injury. If you have the assignment, could I get a copy from you? She told him, I have it at my sorority house. Stop by Saturday morning and I will get it for you.

Jack Stone thought this was going to be special! He was so excited. He anticipated that this was going to be a valuable experience. He was going to become acquainted with a beautiful black girl and he was going to be able to realize, for the first time, that he was becoming involved with a black person in a significant way.

He figured now he had a chance for the first time ever to have a one on one with a black girl. She seemed so nice and friendly. He imagined he would join her in the lounge of the sorority or maybe they would sit and visit in the dining room. He thought she would probably invite him to have coffee. In anticipation of that he stopped by the Spud Nut Shoppe to pick up two cinnamon rolls for them to have with the coffee.

When he got to her sorority with his two Spud Nuts, he rang the doorbell. Another black girl answered the door and asked him through the screen door, Can I help you? He said, "Yes, I came to see